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Student protesters in Chile clashed with police last Wednesday as a march in the Chilean capital Santiago turned violent, resulting in 75 arrests and dozens of injuries. Unrest has gripped the South American nation for more than a year, when Chilean youth, angry about high tuition and inequities in the country’s education system, took to the streets in May 2011.

Students complain that the increasing privatization of Chile’s higher education has resulted in skyrocketing costs and a two-tiered system of private and “traditional” universities that have reinforced the divide between rich and poor. Despite a stilted dialogue between the government and students, few if any compromises have been reached. Center-right President Sebastian Pinera, elected in 2010, has resisted student demands for education to be recognized as a right, instead proposing tax reforms and reductions on student loan interest rates. Pinera, who amassed a fortune of $2.4 billion in the credit card industry, is the first conservative president since the end of the Pinochet regime in 1990. The ongoing turmoil has taken a toll on Pinera’s popularity with his approval ratings falling to as low as 33% in May due to his perceived mishandling of the student protests.

Gabriel Boric, President of the University of Chile Student Federation, said about the Wednesday demonstration,”[t]his is the march of the anguish of families who do not know how to pay for the education of their children; [o]f the students who have been expelled from colleges and universities to organize; [o]f students in technical institutions left to fend to the market. This is the march of Chileans who know that education is not “investing in people” but to form citizens.”

GUEST: Matt Niner, Editor-in-Chief of I Love Chile News, the only English-language news outlet in Chile reporting on the student protests

Visit www.ILoveChile.cl for more information.